A halo of warmth in the darkness of the year: what are you reading spring 2023?

I almost checked out the Lattimore translation of The Iliad last month.

I liked The Flaneur at the time and I almost always find something worthwhile in Edmund White's stuff, but, yes, his self-absorption is an annoyance and sometimes a menace.

Reading Jason Morris’ Levon Helm, a book of poems that includes the long titular poem named after the Band drummer. Morris is an interesting poet to me because he writes in a casual, talky way that I often find cloying or cute, but he’s able to make it work— I find myself gravitating toward his poems a few times per year.

Here’s something Levon’s troubled stepson wrote about him:

https://richardsmanuel.tumblr.com/post/121183926169

I really enjoyed Brandy Jensen’s piece on Jack Reacher for Defector but I am struggling with my first actual Reacher book, TRIPWIRE. The prose is almost Lanchester-level drab and particular. Child will spend two paragraphs describing a door that has no actual bearing on the action, without ever making the door come to life. And the dialogue is so perfunctorily hard-boiled, the whole thing reads like a fiction class writing exercise.

That's a great piece. I've read four Reacher novels. My capsule review would be 'emptily readable bollocks'.

The emptiness, and the random quotidian detail, makes suspension of disbelief hard for me. More than most things I’ve read, I find it hard to imagine the story is Actually Happening. I just picture an English bloke typing in any office, misremembering an old Mission Impossible episode, thinking “what’s a good sentence about a chair?”

love the reacher books tbh. think I read like 15 in one year and I still never tired of descriptions of reacher elbowing some shithead in the face.

Have read none of those books; enjoyed that piece.

I haven’t got as far as any violence yet. Maybe that’s what I’m missing.

Yeah, I think wait until you see Reacher in action, then I'll think you'll know if these are for you. I've read *Tripwire*; there are some good Reacher arse-kicking scenes, as I recall.

It's fun that when are Jack Reacher novels are discussed, the ultimate measure of how bad their prose could be is ... John Lanchester.

Murphy, Miles to Go
Wolfram, What Is ChatGPT Doing
Sooke, Roy Lichtenstein
Ransmayr, The Last World. This last one was an utter waste of time.

I finished "Portrait of Dorian Gray". The book seems to have strange pacing. It starts out with a typical amount of action concentrated into a few weeks, reaches a sort of climax, and then starts skipping ahead, striding over ever increasing spans of time, until we have a chapter that dispenses with entire decades (although I oddly enjoyed that chapter, a cursory summary of all the interests that occupied Gray over a span of 15 or so years, it reads more like an essay and it reminded me a bit of "Bouvard and Pecuchet" as an inventory of trendy ideas of the period), before finally slowing down and becoming more novelistic again to accomodate some final plot business.

Continuing my fin de siecle theme, I am now reading Volume 2 of William James's Principles of Psychology.

The James bros were so different.

Good description, o.nate. FWIW I only read DORIAN GRAY last September or so and my response will be on that ILB thread. I seem to recall that one of the things that slightly surprised me was how heterosexual Dorian Gray (at least sometimes) was.

Having diverted from it to read some other marvellous books, I remembered that I need to keep on with Bono's SURRENDER. It's still readable, entertaining, stimulating, not even slow to read. Yet I'm still not halfway through. It's long.

The mid-1980s are probably the most interesting time I could read about. There's a page on what a good period it was when they were recording THE JOSHUA TREE, in Malahide I believe. Another couple of good pages on the melancholy 'promenades' around Bray and Greystones (surprisingly far out from the city, if Bono was actually living there - in a Martello Tower! - which he connects slightly to Yeats but not at all to Joyce).

From the LPs in 1984 to 1987 was 2.5 years (with a mini-LP in 1985 if you like). At that time this was a relatively long gap. What happened? Maybe they were just touring, maybe it took time make the LP. But also ... Bono (with wife Ali) was living in Ethiopia for a while in 1985, then Central America for a while in 1986. Maybe not long periods but they would have taken organisation at both ends. I wonder, therefore, if one reason for the slightly long delay between LPs was, *already*, Bono's extra-curricular activities.

He can skip over some things rather quickly - the JOSHUA TREE tour, for instance. The Dublin sessions for RATTLE & HUM are hardly mentioned at all, though they're vivid in the film (and interviews take place there). Now we're almost on to ACHTUNG BABY. But not halfway through the book. Logically that suggests that half the book will be concerned with things like ... Bono's debt campaigning, his controversial meetings with world leaders (which he's already discussed), and the less popular later records?

Bono is intellectually lively, if not deep. I'm happy to see him engage with various ideas and people (Mikhail Gorbachev for instance). But I do worry more when he says 'Douglas Alexander has been advising me for the last 5 years'.

may seem odd me jumping in here to defend terry eagleton (!) abt what constitutes influence (!!) but couldn't he simply mean that
(a) W&W were the first to turn up and say "we all need a THEORY of literature and here it is", and
(b) who was being "influenced" is everyone who then said "well yes we DO need one… just not THAT one"

anyway here's the one *i* favour:

novels are so great. novels are like "i made up a little weirdo. oh no, now he's in trouble!"

— Gabrielle Moss (@Gaby_Moss) April 22, 2023

I hope for a long Mark S article in praise of Terry.

weird question, but figure it’s the right place to ask: anyone have a favorite book on the the great fire of London?

mine is pepys's diary but i suspect that's not what you have in mind

(important detail: he buried his big parmesan cheese in the garden to save it from the flames)

I mean I would too

I like the idea of Pepys’ diary (and also the experimental novel by Roubaud), but yes, looking more for straight history, perhaps from a left leaning perspective

Overstory - Powers

Really into it! Makes me want to re read all the nature writing I read in college

Magda Szabó - The Fawn
A collection of Weldon Kees poems.

I still never tired of descriptions of reacher elbowing some shithead in the face.

Writing action like that is hard. You have to be vivid enough to pull the reader's imagination entirely into the scene and terse enough that the pace feels breathtakingly quick.

Overstory - Powers
Really into it! Makes me want to re read all the nature writing I read in college

Will have to check that--also, I keep coming across killer quotes from Thoreau (latest round started in Kim Stanley Robinson's meganovel Greem Earth, whose author is at his own best involved with East and esp. West Coast Great Outdoors). Turns out my local library has even more HDT than KSR, oh boy---and I'll ask them to borrow or buy Robinson's awesome-looking nonfiction
The High Sierra: A love story.
(He is someone who reportedly combined acid with mountain-climbing early on, much more successfully than young Hank Williams JR.)

The history of the blues Francis Davis,
Seems to be a pretty decent read, I'm enjoying the writing. He's gone back to look at pre Blues Minstrelsy and what W.C. Handy heard in a waiting room in 1903 and links to musical theatre. He's also looked at Ali Farka Toure and sees his music as having influence from John lee Hooker and is dubious about the influence being clearly the other way. Like Toure being an existing fan of Hooker before he started citing Hooker as obviously descending from teh West African styles. Think that may be overly cynical but maybe that fandom should be noted, does seem to be a problem with direction of fit.I think that African influence is there anyway.
But anyway, seems to be a decent book , interesting read quite anecdotal andsustaining my interest. I have had this out of the library too long without really looking at it. So need to get through it now.

Not A Nation of Immigrants Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz
her book on settler colonialism . I read her talking about people of Spanish descent including a gentrifying level where people descending from Pueblo Indians were now drifting into claiming themselves to be Spanish recently despite years of Spanish on Pueblo oppression.
I'm now in a section on Irish settlement which reminds me I still need to read Theodore Allen's book The Invention of The White Race which I think I got slowed down on because of the plethora of endnotes. Anyway a book that i do still really want to read which talks about the British settling Scots in Ireland and use of the country as a colony which became a prototype for what they did to set up empire.
The Dunbar Ortiz is really good and I've wanted to read it since it was released a couple of years ago.

I finished two stories in the Penguin book of French stories:

Claire Sainte-Soline, 'Le tabac vert', about a farmer, his wife, and his father. Much tension down on the tobacco farm. The tense (in a different sense) and much of the vocabulary were hard for me and I must often consult the parallel English text. One word to stay with me from this story is 'feuilles', leaves, which must also be the source of 'fueilleton' (a kind of newspaper as I recall).

Roger Grenier, 'Une maison place des fetes': the writing here feels much simpler, and is also discernibly slangy / colloquial at times. I was able to follow it without the English version much more often. The story describes a lad, a trainee lawyer, and his dalliance with two women. It's very much like an Éric Rohmer plot. It's surprisingly racy - the protagonists are always saucily making passes at each other - in a way somewhat in keeping with the colloquial tone. It ends with a summary paragraph about the passing of time. 'Chacun de nous a ses petits pelerinages, ses tombeaux.' I really quite enjoyed this.

mine is pepys's diary but i suspect that's not what you have in mind

(important detail: he buried his big parmesan cheese in the garden to save it from the flames)

― mark s, Sunday, 23 April 2023 bookmarkflaglink

Saving this advice for when London burns again (climate change edition)

A friend of mine sent me a photo of an enormous book in his collection that consists of 400 pages of poems on the fire and rebuilding of London written at the time. Hard to find, apparently, as few copies were printed, but I am going to try to locate a copy.

I return to John le Carré's SILVERVIEW - I was halfway through. Quick to read, it grows on me.

It's solid.

it's good

Rereading Junichiro Tanizaki's Some Prefer Nettles

I interrupted my reading about the French Revolution long enough to read a short palate-cleanser, Aiding and Abetting, Muriel Spark. It was quite clever, but it ended on a very silly note that felt like she just gave up on finding a better ending and tacked one on blindfolded, like pinning a tail on the donkey.

I'm about 2/3 of the way through Birnam Wood. It's taken some unexpected turns; it started out kind of "cozy," but has got much darker. I'm still not 100% sold on the character of the sociopathic billionaire, but she's a very capable writer, whose sentences just sort of carry you along. I imagine her reading in the voice of Sophie Townsend, the woman who did the "Goodbye to All" podcast.

Started reading
Augusto Boal Legislative Theatre
which arrived yesterday. It's an experimental book based on his time in government. He had the idea that the reader should read it in the order they chjose depending on what they wanted to get out of it. In the introduction he mentions a few points taht some people might be interested in so I looked at a couple of those. His interactions with Paulo Freire whose educational work he tried to apply to theatre.
I think I may wind up reading it more linearly which goes against his recommendation..
I'm trying to get more of his message after the local Theatre for Change really disappointed me with their lack of recognition of agency and a few other hypocrisies. Other things that I've read including Freire and a few writers like Angela Saini's comments on race etc have made me view that group very cynically. It seems like Boal's work would have a direct application if handled right and not turned into a self congratulatory management training course.
THe book is mainly about how Boal wound up applying the techniques he developed for the theatre onto the woirk of government once he wound up in an elected position. Back at a time when Brazil had become progressive and not regressed into Bolsanaroism. Boal talks about coming up with the Theatre fo teh Oppressed stuff intially at a time when the system was pretty repressive so things seem to be going around in cycles.
Anyway looking forward to reading this but do have a number of things on teh go at teh same time.
Picked this up quite cheaply as a 'Good' rated copy. It does have some pencil and highlighter underlining/highlighting but book state seems very nice otherwise.

I started teh day by reading a few chapters in Francis Davis' A History Of The Blues which has me wanting to listen to a lot of teh artists mentioned. Book is from 95 so may be missing some updates. I think it has the most recent discovery in terms of Robert Johnson photos in .
Not totally sure about attitudes to race etc but is quite interesting. & Davis isn't prejudiced per se I don't think just don't think he is exactly woke either.
Seems worth reading though.

also wound up moving onto
Joanna Russ How To Suppress Women's Writing
after a couple of hours. She is talking about women writers who had to publish anonymously to get their work out. She mentions teh differentiation in reaction to interpretation of Emily Bronte#s Wuthering Heights between it being published and it coming out a while later that the author is female. Going from it being raw and crude to something much more genteel without anything else being changed than the background information about the author's gender.
I'm quite enjoying the book and glad I got it grabbed through interlibrary loan. Would love to hear it was being read by others after me.
Must read her sci fi novel the Female Man too since I have it somewhere.

Foreverland: On the Divine Tedium of Marriage by Heather Havrilesky

Occasionally very funny memoir of marriage and parenting. I thought the chapter about suburbia was especially good. A lot of reviews seem to object to her personally (she should have made different choices, she is unlikeable, etc.), which seems to miss the point of memoir to me.

The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O'Farrell

Pretty rote historical fiction. Disappointing because I thought Hamnet was great.

American Made by Farah Stockman

Superficially this is a book length version of those diner safari articles about working class midwestern trump voters. In practice I thought it was much better than that. It's mostly not a big picture economics and politics book. It's just reporting on one town/three people.

Dawn by Octavia Butler

Wow. Extremely good. Will maybe say more when I've read the rest of the series.

Act of Oblivion by Robert Harris

If you like Robert Harris you will like this book.

Also read two Patrick O'Brian books, as a treat

I managed to get the Lillith trilogy by Octavia Butler as an omnibus anthology thick tome in a charity shop a couple of years ago and read Dawn but neither of teh other 2 so far. Need to catch up with that and the other Butler I picked up since. Nearly got Parable of The Talents this week cos it's around cheaply.
Watched the first episode fo Kindred a week or so ago. Thought it was ok, so need to watch more. & have the book beside teh bed too.
Butler's good, not sure why I only discovered her recently.

Finished The Confidence Man by Herman Melville, starting Valis by Philip K. Dick.

Finished Birnam Wood. Really let down by the ending. It felt rushed and not at all earned.

xp Omnibus edition of the Octavia Butler trilogy including Dawn is called Lilith's Brood not just Lilith. Series is otherwise called Xenogenesis. I do need to read the rest of it and her other work.
Thinking of black sci fi authors I quite enjoyed the Flame Tree Publishing collection Black sci-fi short stories : anthology of new & classic tales which I think I mainly picked up for the Pauline Hopkins novel of One Blood being included in full . It has a few full length novels from the end fo the 19th century/beginning of 20th which is cool. I thought the imprint was a bit of a tabloid/high st set up but that had some very interesting choices in which means I might give the rest of their output another look. I think I need to read more black sci fi overall. I have Colson Whitehead's Underground Railway around too. But always need to read a lot more than the stack I already am.

Joanna Russ in her How To Suppress Women's writing keeps riffing on a number of ideas collected together as the means by which her title is done. I have the book open in front of me thought I'd repeat it.
She didn't write it
She wrote it but she shouldn't have.
She wrote it but look what she wrote about
she wrote it , but "she" isn't really an artist and "it" isn't really serious,of the right genre -i.e. really art.
She wrote it , but she wrote only one of it
She wrote it but it's only interesting/included in the canon for one limited reason.
She wrote it, but there are very few of her
Which she has been meticulously working through showing examples of where each of these have been done.
I'm really enjoying the book. I think it was republished relatively recently but the irish library system only has one copy which is kept in a basement in Rathmines when not directly requested. Not sure if it is thought to have been replaced by another more recent title or if everything is just inherently systematically sexist

I interrupted my reading about the French Revolution long enough to read a short palate-cleanser, Aiding and Abetting, Muriel Spark. It was quite clever, but it ended on a very silly note that felt like she just gave up on finding a better ending and tacked one on blindfolded, like pinning a tail on the donkey.

― more difficult than I look (Aimless),

Not 20 minutes ago I finished A Far Cry from Kensington.

xp I'd like to read that, I'll see if my library has a copy. the female man is top tier imo fyi.

I'm enjoying it. I see that there was a reprint in 2018 so 5 years ago. I don't really have a landmark for me to guage obscurity/popularity from and can't think offhand where I got turned onto it by. NOt seeing a note of where it was recommended in a bibliography or anything.
Think I may have even heard it discussed, so maybe Backlisted or Better Read Than Dead or something.

meanwhile, I was reading the mushroom at the end of the world but my copy had mysteriously vanished :( so I've moved on to the traveller of the century by andres neuman, following a jclc post about him on the rolling lit fic thread. first thoughts: it's long. but intriguing.

As a complete change of pace, I started Path Lit by Lightning: The Life of Jim Thorpe, by David Maraniss, which my wife gave me for Christmas. I know precious little about "the greatest athlete of all time," and am very curious. The book is a doorstop, but it has been well reviewed. We shall see.

J.H.Prynne - Poems. At nearly 600 pages it's a lot of poetry to go through. While many would say Prynne is opaque -- and while that is true -- there is plenty of fluency (almost O'Hara like at times), and a certain project in mapping out a very modern, inorganic world here. I don't think I've read another poet who is as committed to the inorganic matter as he is.

In the early poetry he can utter a word like "love" or "flowers". These words just don't function at all in the way they would with any other poet. It's what really got to me, at first.

In about the mid-80s things become harder to get an interpretation on, but I felt there was a lot of fluency to the language. The outputs (if you like) are strange, compelling.

I can see why there is a cult around him. For now. Maybe he is the poet we will be reading if we survive our catastrophes.

i am reading MEMO FOR NEMO by william firebrace, very kindly given me as a flatwarming present by my longtime ilx pal and birthday buddy TRACER HAND

it is an old-fashioned essay, amiably pondering jules verne and the nautilus, submarines, aquariums, underwater photography and undersea life and i am enjoying it greatly: it turns out that buying a flat near the sea in plymouth and gradually fashioning it to my needs (viz containing books) is in certain ways not unlike nemo's great project

currently i am reading about the fellow below, the swiss balloonist and bathscapher AUGUSTE PICCARD -- who hergé once saw in the street and immediately shoehorned into the tintin canon

https://i.imgur.com/n0lidXU.pnghttps://i.imgur.com/LsQzfOD.png